


the sun will rise

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Hope, Post-Canon, Triple Drabble, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-10 00:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16459856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: It's the book that finally brings it home to Haymitch, in the end.





	the sun will rise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).



> Titled from the poem at the end of the third book. Written as a treat in Trick or Treat 2018.

It's the book that finally brings it home to Haymitch, in the end. 

Not the kids, the way he's sure the stories will one day tell it: his girl and his boy, followed by a girl and boy of their own, who'll never have to wait for their names to be reaped from a big glass ball. That'll come later.

It isn't the sight of Snow choking on his last breath, either, or Coin dropping from a balcony with Katniss' arrow in her throat. He's still too close to it then, still trying to keep his tribute alive in an ever-shifting arena. Impossible to believe they've won when so-called victory drags the same old terrors behind it, echoed by new jabberjays' voices: as if nothing has really changed, and nothing ever will.

But then the boy comes home one day, and the girl wakes from her stupor. Five primrose bushes are planted in front of a house, and a cat wanders back out of the woods. And ... under scarred hands, a stack of parchment turns into a book. 

_A place to record those things you cannot trust to memory_ , Katniss explains, fingers resting on a sketch of her father's face. Haymitch thinks about the years between his victory, and hers and Peeta's: the forty-six tributes he failed, and the twenty-three victors who replaced them, mostly gone now too. And that's when it really sinks in.

He'll never have to send another child to their deaths. Never have to _be_ an example, ever again. The only lives he's directly responsible for now are the geese in his yard – and they can mostly take care of themselves.

 _Stay alive_ , he'd told them once; _here's some advice_.

They’ve done their part. Maybe it's finally time for him to take that chance again, too.


End file.
